Masterclass with Kathleen La Valle – Advanced Meta-Model(TM)

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Nathalie de Marcé: [00:00:07] Hello everyone, welcome to this wonderful, wonderful masterclass, I am Nathalie de Marcé and

Michel Wozniak: [00:00:16] Michel Wozniak,

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:00:17] And tonight we are hosting Kathleen La Valle. Kathleen La Valle is the program director of NLP Seminars Group International. And they are hosting, they are preparing all of the seminars with Dr. Richard Bandler, John La Valle and, of course, Kathleen La Valle, who is the jewel of NLP. She is Master Trainer of NLP and DHE. And her passion is the Meta-Model. So this Masterclass is going to go deeper and deeper into the Meta-Model. Hi, Kathleen. Thank you for being with us.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:01:03] Thank you for sponsoring me today to be here.

Michel Wozniak: [00:01:09] So just to introduce you the evening. We’ll start with a brief introduction on the Meta-Model that Kathleen will make. We’ll go very fast on that part because we presuppose that you already know things about the Meta-Model. Then we’re going to go through the questions that have been asked. We had very good questions from all over the world, we had people registering from 32 countries with questions from all, all over the planet, even one, one place that I didn’t know of, so, interesting. And after that, we’re going to go more advanced. There will be more advanced things about the Meta-Model. So just stay tuned. Remember to subscribe and

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:02:06] Click the little bell. And you get all the information from us.

Michel Wozniak: [00:02:13] Exactly. So, Kathleen, we’re really pleased to have you with us. So what is the Meta-Model, Kathleen?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:02:23] Well, as you know, I’m very passionate about the subject and the real magic, you know, whether you talk to Richard and John and myself, I tell you that the real magic of NLP is the language. I mean, that’s the distinction that makes the difference. There are fabulous coaching courses out there. And when they look at some of the things that we do within the language, it’s like, wow, you know, that really is like the icing on the cake. It adds that special magic to what you do. So we have some great models that help you to really, really understand where your client’s coming from, what level of processing that’s going on in their brain, so that you can understand better what’s going to be the perfect match for them in whatever you’re going to help them do, or just to understand and help them to understand how they got wrapped up in that loop or how they got stuck in that block so that you can help them find the path out of it. And it’s something that’s hard to do for yourself. You kind of listen to your own words, listen to your own language, you know, write it out or something. But it’s different when you have somebody asking great questions to help and guide you to what it is that you want to know. So the real magic is in this process of asking great questions. Now, I have a little soapbox speech I’m going to give about how to Meta-Model because I’ve seen it taught in ways that really upset me and I was taught that way originally that used words like “Meta-Model violations” and you “challenged the Meta-Model violation”.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:04:02] And I think that whole process is a dance to me. The whole process of listening to someone say something, asking a great question, getting that information, asking another question and shifting gears and moving directions. Those are dances. It’s not a violation. Oh, you did a simple deletion. No. You know what? I’m going to challenge you and it becomes the interrogation model. So for me, it has to be a process of true exchange. And that’s how you get that, and some of the questions. We’re in that area. And I’ll go back to those when we get to those questions. But what I’d like to do is I’m going to share my screen just for a moment here. And. Perfect. OK, know what happened? OK, so. In the process of speaking, in the process of remembering, in the process of the experiences of now, this is what happens in any interaction. You have an experience: you go to a concert, you walk outside, you smell the fresh air, whatever it is, you’re in the moment now. And every moment of now, you’re taking in information, taking all the information in, and you have it through your five senses. All the other filters are engaged. In fact, the filters that are there or your visuals, auditories, your kinesthetics, olfactory, gustatory, your beliefs, your values, your sorting patterns, and then you also delete, distort and generalize information.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:06:03] When all that filtering is taking place, that information is coming in and we put it into what we call a deep structure, which is our memory. Now someone comes along and says: Hey, how was that concert? Or how was the weather today? You have to go back into that deep structure and pull out that information, that memory. And when you do that, you’re passing it through a second set of filters. So by trying, you actually speak the answer to that question. The actual experience has been filtered at least twice. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just the way it works. It’s the way your brain works. It’s the way we work as human beings. So when we filter that information twice and we say something, you know: How was that concert? It was pretty good. How was that concert? Oh, the music was great with the lasers were really annoying. They were too fast. They didn’t go with the music… And whatever you’re saying. Now, the point is that this information has been filtered twice from the actual experience. So, unless I’m a person that will give you tons of details to go on and on for hours and maybe even elaborate and add some things that weren’t there, you’re not going to experience the concert the way I experienced the concert, just by me even describing it.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:07:24] So it’s filtered out now. Not a big deal. We’re talking about how was the concert. It was great. When a client comes to you and you say: What do you want? How can I help you? What is it you’d like me to do for you today? When they answer that question and they tell you what they want, it’s also filtered twice. So in order to get closer and closer to the actual experience, then we need to use a system. Now, remember, one of the filters is this deletion, distortion and generalization. So we delete information, we distort information and we generalize. Again, not a bad thing, because what’s really important is that if we didn’t delete, distort, generalize information, we’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Imagine if you had no ability to delete information. So every moment in time you’d have to be paying attention to everything around you. Every sight, every smell, every feeling, every sound, every experience in your body. It would be maddening if we couldn’t delete information. Distortion is one of my favorites because it is the pattern of creativity. Imagine if you couldn’t distort information, you would have to see everything exactly as it is. And there would be no room for negotiation, for creativity, for anything, because the distortion is what allows people to look at one of those Cornhuskers, the old Cornhuskers, they use on the farm to take the husk off the corn, well, somebody with great distortion ability can look at that and go, I can make a lamp and sell it for five hundred dollars.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:09:09] And so many people can look at things, those big wooden things. They wrapped the cable around when they’re doing construction and they go: That would make a great table. I can make a poker table out of it. So it’s that distortion that you can look at something and imagine it to be something else. Distortion is also great for problem solving, because if you can look at a problem and distort it to where it actually can be a solution to something else or an ability to gain information about something else, then that’s great. So distortions are very useful. Generalizations is how we learn. We’re patterners. That’s part of our historical ability to survive, is that we recognize patterns. We can pick up on patterns very easily. So it’s a very important learning process, it’s to be able to generalize and pattern. So these things are all good. So for me to see somebody treat the Meta-Model and the filtering system as a violation and we have to challenge it, you know, you’re punishing somebody for doing what the human brain has done and allowed us to evolve to this point. So that’s my soapbox speech for the day that we have to look at this as a discovery. So I’m going to suggest that everybody right now pick your favorite treasure hunter, whether it be Indiana Jones or whoever you want, and put that Indiana Jones hat on or whoever you pick, you know, your adventurer.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:10:43] I want you to look at the Meta-Model or look at your client in that way, because the words they speak are going to be filled with little hidden gems or little hidden codes that you can decipher to help them find the treasure that they really want. So that’s about the attitude of when you’re working with someone with the Meta-Model, is listening to the words and knowing that there’s more information in there, that there’s hidden gems, there’s information that’s going to help you get exactly your client to where they want to be. I’m sure any of you who’ve done coaching or NLP or anything like that, you know, you’ve had somebody. They told you what they wanted, you bought it, you went for it, and you found out that it really wasn’t what they wanted, because sometimes it’s just easy with our generalization and patterning. We’ll just adopt it and go, oh, yeah, I know. I know exactly what you mean. As as a coach, as an NLP Programmer, as an NLP Trainer, that phrase should go away. I know exactly what you mean. Oh, I understand. No, you don’t. So, put the adventurer hat and go for the, go for the treasure hunt. That’s the attitude that I would like everyone to take with me today as we go through some of this stuff.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:12:03] So in understanding this process of building the experience that we have and that we want, the way that we store things and the way that we communicate, we just get that one point, that that surface structure’s already been filtered twice. So we have to kind of pull back and search and hunt for the hidden gems so that we get the client to have exactly the experience that they want to have. And the beauty of that is if you do this process well enough, I tell my practitioners all the time when I’m teaching, if you do this process well enough, if you do the desired state well enough, a lot of times you’re done! Once the client understands, because they’ve gone through their own filters back to the exact experience that they want, and when they try it on and they experience how good it does feel and how wonderful they can see things through that new filter and hear things and do things. And a lot of times, you’re done. The motivation is there. Everything is there. Sometimes you don’t even have to do anything else other than just take them through this process to get a really good, well formed goal, or desired state. So let me stop sharing this for a moment. And I guess we can go on to some of the questions and then we’ll move into the into the Model.

Michel Wozniak: [00:13:35] Ok, so the first question is from Véronique from France. And she was asking, what are the other uses of the Meta-Model apart from the work on beliefs?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:13:47] Ok, well, Véronique, thank you for the question. One of the the uses of the Meta-Model is not just about beliefs, and certainly that’s one of the important parts that will get you in the new model. But it’s just because it’s around everything that we communicate with. So it’s not just a belief. You know,somebody could say: I want a sandwich. Well, you can go make them a turkey sandwich. And that’s not what they wanted, it has nothing to do with a belief. So this is, in our everyday communication, is to take the moment to be sure that we understand exactly what someone wants when they’re asking for it, whether it’s in the workplace or a sales environment. If you’re selling somebody something and they say: I want this, I want that, it’s good to have good questions. We don’t want to become the Meta-Monster either. Somebody says, I want a turkey sandwich. You know, you don’t have to say, well, what kind of turkey do you want? You want smoked turkey? Especially if you don’t have smoked turkey, don’t ask them if they want smoked turkey, but you don’t have to get crazy with it and then ask the average person does not communicate with a lot of detail when they say things, because we’re used to just talking to people that know what we want. We’re used to being in situations where people know what they want. So when you go to a situation where people don’t, you’re still speaking as if you know what I want, you understand what I want. So the Meta-Model’s not just about beliefs, it’s about any interactive communication that needs more clarity, so that you get what the person is talking about and you’re able to then satisfy them with whatever it is, whether you’re selling them something, teaching them something, or just simply having an interaction like: Can I make you a sandwich?

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:15:40] Ok. Wow. I love your answers. They are so, so, so precise and clear. We have Rich from Island of Man who is asking how best to use the Meta-Model in everyday life? What would be your highlights?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:16:03] Well, Rich, you know, I don’t use the Meta-Model in everyday life on purpose. I mean, once you work with it, you know the model, it kind of gets automatic in your brain. So I know from talking to someone, I need to be a little more specific with what I’m asking for, you know, that I might say to myself, something’s not right here. I’m not motivating myself. I don’t feel motivated about this. Let me go back in and look at what I’m planning in my head. So, you know, you have evidence based information that comes in that says something’s not right, I need to pay attention. And the most part, I don’t consider the use or abuse of the Meta-Model, it’s just about having communication. If I’m speaking with someone and all of a sudden I’m like: Well, wait a minute, we’re talking like this. Then my Meta-Model alarm goes off and I’m going to start engaging and asking better questions. But otherwise, I really don’t use it. Now, if you’re talking about the use of the Meta-Model every day in terms of practicing, that’s a little different. And that’s the reason I think we have some other questions that line up with that as well. There’s lots of ways to practice it and we’ll go over some of those.

Michel Wozniak: [00:17:20] Ok, thank you. And I think, yeah, the next one is is also quite similar. It’s from Caroline from New Zealand and she’s asking: How can you find the balance of maintaining rapport with the client while asking him challenging questions in the media model?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:17:41] Yeah, Caroline, this is exactly what we were talking about, if you’re losing rapport, then you’re probably in the interrogation mode with your client and not with the adventurer mode because I have never had a problem asking great questions, if I do it from a state that to me combines two things. One is I truly care about helping the person. So I sort of spin that feeling in myself that I care and I want to help this person. And the other piece is this strong urgency of curiosity. And it’s I spin this curiosity and this caring. And that’s where I’m coming from, when I ask the questions. And I joke around in the seminars, I give people a model to go model, and that’s Columbo. And if you don’t know who Columbo is, go to look him up on the Internet because it’s an old TV show. He was an old detective. He had a rumpled raincoat. He had always big cigars. And he always sounded like he was confused. Now, I don’t say to go to that extreme, but nobody took him seriously. The bad guys always just never took him seriously and overlooked him because they thought he didn’t know what he was doing because he was kind of a bumbling, confused old guy. And he would always, of course, get the person to confess or get them caught in a lie. And that’s because he came from this… You’d say he was always like thinking and curious and Mmmm.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:19:17] You know, you told me… Mmmmm. So if you go from that sense of curiosity with caring, I have never had a person go like: Why are you asking me all these questions? And if somebody did that, then I would say: Because I really want to make sure I get exactly what it is you want, so you get what you want. And that, you know, mixing in my own stuff. So I have no problem saying that to a client, but I’ve never had anyone block at the way I’m doing it. So I think if you’re concerned about maintaining rapport while asking questions, because even that word is in the question: challenging questions. You have to get rid of that headset. This is not a challenge. This is a treasure hunt. And you’re helping them find their treasure. You’re assisting them. So when you ask the questions and we go over them, in the advanced model later, we’ll go over actually asking some questions. So that’ll be something. You’ll see the technique in that. It’s really about spinning a great feeling of: you care about the person. And if you don’t, then you’re in the wrong profession. But if you care about the person and you’re really curious, then just ask the questions, looking for those hidden gems, get rid of that violation challenge model out of your head. And that rapport question is going to go away.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:20:38] Absolutely. Absolutely. Judith from Germany is saying: Dear Kathleen, thank you for this wonderful masterclass. And she’s asking: Maybe you have another tip on how you can motivate people who like to generalize more quickly to give specific answers.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:21:04] Now, here’s where I’m going to go backtracking a little, because if someone is not willing to give you specific information, then they don’t trust you. And that’s a hallucination on my part. I’m going to admit that right now. That’s a generalization and a hallucination because I don’t know who we’re actually talking about. But I can kind of guess that if someone’s not willing to give specific information to you, then they probably don’t trust you. You probably haven’t built that sense of rapport with them or you haven’t made it clear to them what your purpose is, that your purpose is to help them, that your purpose is to help them find that hidden treasure, that hidden gem that they want to have. So so that’s my answer to that question. There is no other tip other than if you do the questions right, and you have that sense of rapport with them, and that doesn’t mean you have to sit there for 30 minutes and bodymatch and breathing and all that stuff. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about some basic principles and understanding the process that we’re going to do today. And here’s what we’re going to do. I tell people up front, I say: Look, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to tell me what you want. I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions. And sometimes you might think to yourself: Hey, why are you asking all these questions? Bear with me. Trust me, it’s going to be great because we’re both on a treasure hunt here. So there’s nothing wrong with doing all that. Still up front, and I’m going to ask you a lot of questions, it’s going to seem crazy, but trust me, it’s all part of the process. And then we’re going to do this and then do that and you’re going to feel great, you know? So that would be my suggestion. I think we skipped one about being fluid in the use of the Meta-Model? From Marie?

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:22:58] Oh, yeah. Oh, yes.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:23:01] I just wanted to tie in that same thing with the question above it being fluid in it means that you’ve actually practiced it. And one of the best ways to practice the Meta-Model is to generate the patterns. Take if you have your manual or whatever list of Meta-Model patterns you have, and generate them. I mean generate, I mean, put a pencil in your hand and a piece of paper, or pen or marker, crayon, I don’t care, and generate the patterns. If you want to do it on your keyboard, you can, but the more movement, the better in terms of the brain. But I’ll take fingers on a keyboard if that’s what you have to do. But generate those patterns, sit there and say: I am going to do five simple deletions, five comparative deletions, five unspecified verbs, write sentences for each one. And the more you do that, the more you generate it, the more you’ll use it speaking and the more you’ll hear it when other people are speaking. And that’s the key way to be fluid in the Meta-Model: it’s to write out the patterns. And this is something you can do. You’re stuck in a waiting room somewhere, you know, you’re on a bus or train or a plane, not while you’re driving. There are always times when we get stuck somewhere. And I tell you, I would rather you take out your own pad and pencil and write out patterns than to pick up a magazine in the waiting room that everyone else has touched. So just write down your patterns any time you’re stuck like that, just start generating two or three or four, whatever you have time for. But that’s the key to be fluid.

Michel Wozniak: [00:24:49] Ok, yes. And this question from Marie from France, is very connected to the one from Mark, saying: How do you recommend studying the Meta-Model and optimizing our skills with it? So it’s really..

Kathleen La Valle: [00:25:03] The same question Mark, same same thing. Write them out! It’s magic. It’s absolute magic, write them out. That’s how I did it. In fact, when we were in our practitioner, we were required at night to do at least ten of each. And we had to bring them the next morning, and show them. Write them out. Absolutely.

Michel Wozniak: [00:25:27] Mmm. Thank you. So so the next question is from Tatiana from Russia and she’s asking: Do you think that paraverbal and nonverbal communication are connected to the Meta-Model?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:25:40] Tatiana, I love this question. Yes, absolutely. They become more difficult in terms of picking the question, but when someone is paraverbaling… I apologize again, the people watching don’t know this yet, but I explained to Michel and Nathalie, contractors are all over the house because we’re moving. And so I’m hidden in this one little room to do this call today, but I can’t shut the phone off. So if it rings, I’m just picking it up and putting it down.. Phone breaker state. So if someone is paraverballing or nonverballing, they are doing something in their head. So if you say: How was that concert? And somebody goes: Yeah, yeah.. That’s a paraverbal, you know. If you go: How was that concert? And they go…  That’s non-verbal, but there’s still a communication there. So I would take that as a giant deletion. But it’s not a real category, giant deletion, but I’m making it a new category. It’s called Giant Deletion. So you would ask a different question so you can suggest look for counterexamples. So somebody goes: How was that concert? And and they go: Mm. Then you can say: Did you like it or did you not like it? Was it good, was it bad, you never just assume and go: Oh, so it was bad. That’s not a question. That’s a statement and a guess. And it’s like fishing. I always tell people when they’re working with a client, fishing is the worst thing you can do, because every time you’re wrong, you lose a little bit of that report. You lose a little bit of that. So it was bad? Well, no, I didn’t say it was bad.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:27:41] Oh, so you didn’t like it? Well, no, I didn’t say that, I mean.. So it didn’t live up to your expectations. No, what are you talking about? So fishing is no good, but you can simply, if it’s that important, so you say in a client’s situation: What do you want? And they say: (sigh). You know, that’s a giant deletion. Then at that point, you can ask another question or make a statement that says: In order for me to help you, get exactly what it is that you want, I’m going to need some information. So you could give me a little hint of what is it that you want. Or you can say: I see this is important to you, and well, you wouldn’t be here in front of me as a client. So, how can I help you? Ask the question a different way. If you say: What do you want? And that didn’t work, then say: How can I help you? Change the question in a different way. Because sometimes people say: What do you need? Well, if there isn’t something that they need, maybe it was something they wanted. And that’s two different things. So if you say: What do you need? And they go like… (watching up) Is there something you want while you’re here? Oh, yeah, you know, actually… So it would just be about asking questions and if the question doesn’t work, then make a statement: In order to be able to help you, I’m going to need some more information. So, what can I do for you? How can I help? Change it to couple of different ways and see if you get better responses.

Michel Wozniak: [00:29:16] And just before Nathalie gives the next question, I just want to let you know to all of you who are listening now that we’re watching the various comments you’re doing on YouTube. So if you have any questions, any more questions about what Kathleen is saying, just don’t hesitate to write it down. And if we have time, we’re going to to go through those questions too.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:29:39] Absolutely. And actually, the next question, I absolutely adore. It’s Rossana Huerta from Mexico. She says: I heard that you have a wonderful metaphor about the little verb connected to Nominalizations. Could you tell us that metaphor?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:30:02] Bedtime story already? It’s funny how these things get around, you know? Well Rossana, this is the metaphor I tell for nominalizations. And basically, it’s about: Once upon a time, because all great stories start like that. Once upon a time there was a little verb and this little verb love to run and play and skip and jump and do all kinds of fun things in the forest. And this little verb is hopping its way through the forest, very happy. And all of a sudden, this evil witch and cast a spell on the little verb and turned it into a rock. So now, this poor verb is sitting there in the middle of the forest and it could no longer run or play or jump or do any of the fun things. He just had to sit there and he was very sad. But our hero, the Neurolinguistic Programster, came in to the forest and saw the rock and took pity on him and he broke the spell that the evil witch casted and turned the stone back into a verb, so that once again the little verb could hop and skip and run and jump and play and have all kinds of fun, once again. The end. They lived happily ever after.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:31:34] Thank you. We love it.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:31:36] Basically what that means is that’s what we do with novelizations. We take a great verb that’s great to do things, and we turn it into a noun and then we throw it around like we need more communication. Why don’t we have more communication here in this company? And we treat it as a noun. And our job as NLP Programsters is to turn those things back into a verb, so we can help our clients get back into the activity and the process that’s supposed to be there. So that’s what that metaphor is about.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:32:10] Thank you so much.

Michel Wozniak: [00:32:14] Thank you very much. So Radu from Romania is asking: How can we use and teach the Meta-Model to children?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:32:24] Well, here’s the funny thing about this. With children, it’s best to get rid of the Meta-Model patterns when speaking to them, for the most part, especially the modal operators. Because it’s complicated to them. Their brains… And when we’ll go into the advanced model, you’ll see why this is. But their brains are not at that level yet. And that depends on the age of the children we’re talking about. If you’re talking about teaching it to teenagers, absolutely. And people that are in the higher grades, maybe from sixth grade up and definitely high school, getting ready for college, yes. But young young children that are like maybe under 10 or under 9, there’s really no need to get that crazy with it because they’re processing the same way, they’re building their strategies, they’re building their beliefs. They haven’t quite yet formed all that. And and it’s better to take it out of the communication. The Milton model works much better with children than the Meta-Model. Nathalie is shaking her head from experience!

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:33:34] Absolulety! I Confirm!

Kathleen La Valle: [00:33:35] From experience, the Milton Model is the way to go.  That’s when you say: Would you like to take your bath before dinner or after dinner? That’s the only choice there: You take the bath. Would you want it before or after? So those are the fun things in the Milton Model that you can use with children. But when you say: I want you to put your jacket on. It’s like, well, that’s nice, you want me, but I don’t want to put my jacket on. You want it, not me! I need you to put your jacket on. It’s nice to need things. You know, we can get into loops and loops with the patterns. So using the Meta-Model, the only part that I think is really important for children is the Cause and Effect, when you’re building beliefs. That if you do this, then it makes this easier. So if you put your toys away, when you’re done, it makes it easier than spending your whole weekend cleaning your room, because doing this makes this easier. So when you’re working with beliefs, I think that some of the Meta-Model patterns are important to use, but for all the modal operators and some of the other stuff, it’s not an issue with younger children.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:34:45] The most direct communication is best. And that doesn’t mean that you bark and go: Clean your room! Put your toys away! I’m not talking about that kind of direct communication. But I’m talking about taking away all the process words and still speaking with the calmness or love or the curiosity or whatever states you want to use. I’m still talking about using that, not to become a dictator, but you can still get rid of all those processes, you know, those fancy phrases and words, and be more direct. Now, teaching children the Meta-Model is the same way you teach an adult. I don’t think there’s any difference. The only difference you’re going to find is they’ll learn faster, because children have less filters. Let’s be honest. I love teaching NLP to children and I love working with children, because if I tell a child to take the picture in their mind and make it bigger and put a purple light on it, they’re like: OK. If I tell an adult to do that, they’re going to be going: How much bigger? Why does it have to be purple? Can it be blue? What do you mean: like a purple light, like actually see the bulb in the picture or just like a, you know… That’s what adults do.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:36:03] Children, if I say: Take the picture and squish it like a towel and wring out all the bad feelings, children are like: Oh yeah, cool, yeah, and they’re doing it. And adults are like: What? You want me to take my image in my head and squish it like a towel? How’s that going to work? You know, so working with children is not an issue. It should be easy. And if you really want to teach them the Meta-Model patterns, you teach it to them the same way you teach their ABCs or their mathematician multiplication tables or whatever you’re teaching them. I wouldn’t concern myself about how to teach children. Just do it. They’re going to be, you’ll be surprised. They are just easy at it. But using it with them, you’d better off making sure they understand the cause and effects, that’s important, because you teach them consequences. Some of those patterns like that. But there’s no reason for them to want to use normalizations and things like that, because you want them to have action. You want them to be able to take action.

Michel Wozniak: [00:37:10] Ok, thank you. There’s one question, one live question from Anne-Laure. Very interesting question: If possible, could you please ask Kathleen to remind us how the Meta-Model was created, the origin, how Bandler and Grinder decided to create the Meta-Model?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:37:30] Well, it came out of a lot of the different works that they were studying back then in terms of things around transformational grammar. And the logistics logical, thinking of the word right now, it just went because we’re a little off the beaten path, but. The logic and reason, I can’t think what the chunked-up term for that is in terms of gramatics, but it’s when they’re studying those things. I mean, the people that they had influence back then were Karpinsky and Gregory Bateson and I’m trying to think of the third guy, this wasn’t what I prepared for, but definitely people like Gregory Bateson and the people that Richard had a strong influence with and conversations with and Grinder being a linguistics professor from the first part, they really put this together in terms of this came straight out of that and also in the transformational grammar, which was really hot back then. So this was around the 70s, late 70s or so that was like really hot, transformational grammar. And they came out of that working with also other people they modeled, like Milton Erickson. You know the whole Milton Model came out of Milton Erickson, and that was about noticing the patterns that he was using. And one of the things they noticed is that he was using the patterns of transformational grammar. He was utilizing the Meta-Model patterns. But rather than asking questions about people using them, he was using them on other people. And that’s one of the things in the advanced model that we’re going to work on, is using that inverse Meta-Model. So that’s a tie into what we’re going to be doing. But that’s basically where that came from, with Dr. Grinder and Dr. Bandler working together with the linguistics knowledge that Dr. Grinder had and also with the influences of the people they were working with, like the level of Gregory Bateson, he was genius, absolute genius.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:39:54] Thank you so, so much. I know it’s a live question and also Laura Spicer is saying: Yes, this is a great addition to last night!

Kathleen La Valle: [00:40:10] Yeah, we had a great masterclass with Laura Spicer and their cyber practice group that they run. We had a lot of fun playing with them. We played with the Meta-Model, which is always fun.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:40:21] Absolutely.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:40:24] Back to work. I want to make sure we have time for our Advanced Meta-Model.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:40:27] Yes, we have Bob from Australia who is asking: I have all the tools in NLP, but I still have many difficulties when facing life challenges like health issues. How can I use the Meta-Model to overcome them?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:40:51] Ok, so this is a two pronged answer, Bob. One prong is, you know, it’s really hard to, I mentioned this briefly earlier, it’s hard to Meta-Model yourself, unless you literally sit there and write out your internal dialogue. And this is an exercise we’ve had people do in different seminars where you just write out whatever you’re saying yo yourself. So, wow, I wonder why I’m writing out what I’m actually saying to myself right now. This seems kind of silly, but I’m sitting here writing out this exercise and everything I say inside my head. I’m going to write down that. So in the beginning, you start out that way. And then, just as your thoughts start to wonder, you just keep writing, and then go back and look at the Meta-Model patterns that are there in your own internal dialogue and begin to ask yourself questions about that. Or if you know for a fact that there’s things you say to yourself all the time, like: Oh my gosh, I’m getting sick, or: Oh my gosh, I don’t feel well, that means this or that. So when you think about that and you go, wow, I’m just trying to build a belief inside of my head, just because I’m a little tired today means I’m probably getting sick. Has there ever been a time I was a little tired and didn’t get sick?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:42:06] These are the kind of questions that you would ask if the client said that to you. So that’s one answer. But it’s easier when you have somebody outside of yourself asking you good questions. It’s just easier. I know myself and I’ve been in NLP now for, I don’t even know, probably more than thirty five years. I keep saying thirty five years. So it’s got to be more than thirty five years and it’s probably closer to 40. And there are some things now that have become very automatic for me. You know, if I start doing the gloom and doom thing or I feel depressed for the moment, I go: OK, I’m going to let myself be depressed just for a moment. Go ahead, have a pity party. Get really good depressed. And you know, and go: All right that’s done! So, I mean, there’s things that automatically kick in. I start to feel afraid of something and the picture shifts and something else comes in and I’m switching myself without even thinking about it now. So it does become automatic when you’re really good at it and been using NLP. Bob I don’t know what your experience is in terms of who you trained with or how often you’re using it now, but if you can find somebody, you certainly can ask Michel or Nathalie or ask me for somebody nearby you who might be able to assist you.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:43:32] Health issues are funny. I mean, health issues, you can have the best brain in the world, the best attitude in the world, and you can still have a health issue. It’s just the nature of being human. And I know that very well myself. But your attitude is really what helps you get through these health issues. So you have to really change your belief about those health issues. There’s the worst case scenario that most people fly to in a health situation. And I know that your attitude and how you talk about it really makes an impact. Here’s the secret: Your immune system is listening to everything you say. Your immune system is active and it is in connection with your brain and your gut. And so the things you say and the things you feel and the things you do are going to impact them and whether people are going through medical surgeries or conditions.. We had a cosmetic surgeon who was purchasing one of our tapes that we had, this is how old the story is. Cassette tapes that we had on called “Convincing Comfort”. Now it’s a digital file on NLP Eternal, but it used to be a cassette tape and and he was buying them for his patients because he found that if he gave the patients the tape to listen to the week before the surgery, during the surgery and after the surgery, he was finding out that they were healing faster.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:45:14] This is not a claim. This is one person’s experience. So I’m not making any medical claims here. But the doctor said that his patients were in better spirits going into the surgery, that they were able to control their pain, with less medication afterwards. And they were less bleeding during the intervention because they were in this hypnotic, joyful, convincing comfort state. And so we can influence things to a certain extent, but it certainly doesn’t replace having healthy activities, whether it be exercise, nutrition, all this fun stuff and having a good attitude about it. So I do suggest that if this is really a serious issue for you, that you find somebody that can help you really look at it, that I would first try it yourself to listen to your own internal dialogue and make better choices about what you say to yourself. If you find that you’re connecting things through that cause and effect or that complex equivalence all the time, about “this means this” and “this means that”, “this is going to make this happen”, then stop that and change it, break those generalizations and break those distortions so that you’d say: Every time I feel this way, it just means that I’m going to learn something new. So you can build different connections in those those patterns.

Michel Wozniak: [00:46:40] Wow, thank you. Perhaps did you have other things you wanted to share with your PowerPoint, also?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:46:50] Yeah when we get to the other model?

Michel Wozniak: [00:46:52] Ok, so the next part of the other model. So perhaps we’ll continue with the questions.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:46:57] And after the questions, we can take a quick five minute break or something and…

Michel Wozniak: [00:47:03] Sure. OK, so there’s a question from Juan from Bolivia and he’s asking: How can you make the difference between real intuition and mind reading?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:47:16] Yeah, that’s a good one, Juan. There’s a quick and easy answer to that. It’s called: test. Because there’s nothing wrong with mind reading and there’s nothing wrong with intuition. And sometimes there’s no difference between them. There’s absolutely no difference between them. But I don’t care whether I’m being intuitive or I’m doing a mind read. I’m always, always, always going to test before I take action. And that’s one of the things in the Meta-Model that we’re taught as a practitioner, is that it’s OK to mind read, it’s not a bad thing. There’s no violations. It’s not a bad thing to mind read. The problem comes is when we take action against that mind read and without checking to make sure if you’re right. So I don’t really see a difference. I think some people are more in tune with their intuition and listen to it better or feel it better or see it better. But we’re all intuitive and I think mind reading a lot of times comes out of that. And it also can be very wrong in some cases. And then that’s when it’s a problem. I think yesterday I told a quick, quick story about somebody mind read that everybody in their work hated them. And when I asked the great question: How do you know? Which is the question for that Meta-Model pattern, they said: Oh, because when I go into work, everybody’s at the computer on the phone and I walk in, nobody stops to say: Good morning, how are you? Did you see that great show last night? Did you have a good weekend? And and I’m thinking to myself. You know what my response to her was? My response to her was: You’re right. I think you’re right.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:49:06] I think they probably all hate you. And she’s like: What? And I said: Well, if you walk in and everybody’s at their desk working or on the phone, what does that mean? What time do you go in? Are you ever late? She’s almost always late. Well, they’ve already done the: Hi, how are you? Did you have a good evening last night? They’re done with that. Now they’re out to work. And then she sashays in and expects everybody to stop what they’re doing to notice her. So in that case, she was right. I said: You know what, you’re right. They probably all hate you. But if I didn’t check that mind read, if I bought that and then decided to build for her a method of getting rapport with somebody or a method of negotiating and all this other stuff I would have built for her, to get people to like her at work. And that wasn’t the case. The case was showing up on time. That would fix it all right there. So so the mind reading is so important to check, test and ask great questions. Now, the difference between intuition and mind reading, I think they’re one and the same. Some people just are better at it because they’re more in tune with it. Can everybody be better with it? Yes. You can learn how to enhance and build your intuition the same way you learn how to build and enhance in NLP trainings your submodalities and your sensory awareness, your sensory acuity. It’s all part of the process and you can learn to be even more intuitive. But I don’t care how intuitive you are, it’s always good to check and test.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:50:48] Absolutely. Thank you. We have Catherine from Israel and Mairon from Dominican Republic that are asking very similar questions. I am a very empathetic person. How can I help someone without getting emotionally involved? And this one I get in every seminar. There’s an empathetic person that suffers with their client.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:51:25] Yeah. And the biggest problem with that, and Catherine and Mairon, thank you for asking that question. The biggest problem with that is that you are ineffective at that point. You are not effective. Because if you get sucked into the content, if you get sucked into the emotions and the states, then you’re no longer able to be outside, monitoring and asking good questions, because your brain juice is doing something else. You’re getting the bad brain juice in there, the bad feelings. And you want to be able to keep that good brain juice, so that you’re noticing things and hearing things and feeling things and sensing things. So it’s important to be able to have that ability to step back and not to look uncaring. So if somebody goes: Well, you know, my life’s falling apart. You go: Oh, how is that working for you? It’s not that you have to be cold and impersonal. You know, it’s OK to.. When clients are doing things, are saying things, I do go inside and try it on. I go inside quickly and I try on that state or that feeling because I want to have a better understanding. But then I have to take it out, step out of it really fast too. But I do try things on.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:52:41] The client say things. I pretend I’m saying it. And how would I feel if I’m saying that. So the empathy is great to have. The issue is you have to try it on, then take it off. That’s the important part. Now, if you need an exercise to do this, then the important thing is first to build that belief of what your purpose is, working with your client and your purpose is to help them. And you have to understand that if you empathize with them, you’re not in the ability to help them. So that goes away. So if you truly want to help them, then you have to not, you have to stop that process. In order to stop that process one of the best things to do, and I do this when I work with clients anyway, is like I told you, I build that feeling of caring and I build that feeling of curiosity. And I have a little excitement, too, because I know what they’re going to look like in an hour from now or 20 minutes from now or two hours from now. I know what they’re going to look like. So I get excited, too, and I spin that feeling and I notice which direction it’s going and I spin it and spin it bigger and faster to where I almost create like a dome around me.

Kathleen La Valle: [00:53:50] So it’s almost like a shield. It just becomes this whole, you know, spinning shield and I can bring it all the way around. So I’m almost like in an energy dome. That way, if anything that they try to send me even or pull from me even. We all know about emotional vampires and people that are just sucking anything they can from you energetically. So by having this great feeling around me, and I can see clearly through it, I can feel here, sense, taste, whatever I have to do. But it’s a shield. So those things come and they stay right on the shield so that I can identify them and see them. And I say: Oh, this is this feeling or oh, this is this experience. And it stays there. And I can sample it, I can feel it, I can try it on, but it doesn’t come into me. I build this sort of energetic shield around me and that’s a way of protecting and that’s a good thing to do any time you’re working with a client, just to protect yourself.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:54:54] Yeah, that’s an amazing tip.

Michel Wozniak: [00:54:58] Thank you. There is also a question from Malaysia, from Akma and Akma is asking: How do you choose the first question when you challenge the Meta-Model?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:55:10] I don’t. I don’t choose the first question. My client does. So the first question is what my client says. So whatever my client says, that’s how I choose the question. So it’s not like I sit there and think about a question I want to ask, because I won’t know until my client actually speaks. So Akma, one of the things that is useful is to know our favorite questions are: How? So I kind of have that ready. But it’s not necessarily my first question, but I always have the ‘How’ question ready. In fact, I call it the magic ‘How’ question because it’s better for us to know how somebody does something than why they do it, because it’s in that process that we can shift and change and distort creativity to build them something new. So how do you do it? What are you doing? How do you do it? Even when do you do it is more important information than why. So I always have the ‘How’ question ready to go. It’s locked and loaded. Ready to go. But the question I choose is based on whatever they’re saying to me, so I don’t choose the question. They choose it for me based on what they’re telling me.

Nathalie de Marcé: [00:56:27] Absolutely, we we have Philippe from France who is asking: Can we use the Meta-Model to eliminate procrastination?

Kathleen La Valle: [00:56:43] Can we use the Meta-Model… Oh, I see, we skipped a couple of questions. Can we use the Meta-Model to eliminate procrastination? I think so. I think because we need to see the process of what’s going on, the process of how someone is.. Obviously, I’m assuming you’re talking about a client, if you’re talking about yourself, how to use it to stop procrastinating, that’s a different case. But if someone is a procrastinator telling you that they want to stop procrastinating, of course, the first part of that is to ask them what do they want instead? Because we don’t take stop procrastinating as a goal. So we tell them: Just put that off for a while, it’s not funny. If they want to stop procrastinating, then what is it that they want to be able to do, because they don’t want to be in turbo gear, 24/7 the rest of their life. That’s not what the answer to that is. So we can ask them questions about the process, because I’m sure that there’s something in there, a belief or an exaggeration or a comparative something going on in the Meta-Model patterns that we can change for them, because people that procrastinate usually make things harder than they have to be in their brain. So you look at the sink full of dishes and a procrastinator will say: Oh, that’s going to be so hard, it’s going to take so long. And they start making images of hours going by and it’s really a five minute job. So in Meta-Model land, you know, we have blown that out of proportion and connected it more. There’s a complex equivalence too: Sink full of dishes is a lifetime of work and suffering.

[00:58:41] It’s a complex equivalence. So we have to break that complex equivalence and and help them to understand that, you know: How good will you feel when that’s done? And I always amaze myself. I’m using this example because I used to do this. I’d walk by the sink full of dishes and I go: Oh, God, this is going to take an hour. And now it’s funny because I put my coffee in the microwave in the morning for two minutes. And if there’s anything in the sink, it’s usually done while I’m waiting in that two minutes. And I go: Two minutes! That’s amazing! I would have thought this would take at least 15 minutes, it only to be two minutes. So I always tell people who have problems with that, actually time when you do get up off the sofa and do it. Actually time how much it takes to do it, because I want to build that complex equivalence in there, so that it equals something else other than lifetime of agony. So the sink full of dishes equals two minutes as opposed to the sink full of dishes equals a lifetime of agony and hard work. So you can use the Meta-Model in that respect for things like procrastination, whether it’s with a client or whether it’s with yourself. But that’s usually what happens, is we just connect things that are really ridiculous. And that’s what makes us procrastinate it, because we don’t realize in a comparative deletion land how quickly it can be done, how easily it can be done.

Michel Wozniak: [01:00:09] Yeah, thank you. We also have a question from Lisa from Bulgaria, but I think you already answered it. It was: I see how you can use Meta-Model on other people, but can you Meta-Model yourself?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:00:23] Same thing. If you want to do the internal dialogue exercise, you can. Or like I said, it’s really important if there’s certain things, you know, you say to yourself all the time, you wake up and go: Oh, this is going to be a long day or any of those things you hear yourself saying, just stop. In fact, the best way to do it is actually to scream that word inside your head, not out loud, it would scare the other people in the house. But if you hear yourself going: Oh, this is going to be a long day, then just literally go STOP inside your head and go: OK, so what’s the first thing we’re going to do today? You know, because the fact is you got up and that should be a celebration in itself. You know, some people say it’s any day above ground is a good day, you know, so just enjoy that fact and look at what’s next, what are you going to do next? What’s the first thing you’re going to do? Take one thing at a time.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:01:19] Yeah, absolutely. Michael is asking: How did you develop your approach for the Meta-Model over time to where you have it today?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:01:33] Two things. One was, as I said when I first started learning NLP, it was before I was training directly with Doctor Bandler, I had taken a Prac and a Master Prac with an institute, one of the primary people in the society of NLP working directly with Dr. Bandler as student. But it wasn’t training directly with Dr. Bandler. And that’s when I learned the Meta-Model as an abusive tool. And then, when I first started training directly with Dr. Bandler, which was probably in my second year of studying NLP, we started going to Dr. Bandler’s events, and it was like night and day. It was like: Oh, my God. Like suddenly, you know, it was a puzzle. It was a journey. It wasn’t a tool or a weapon. It was a discovery process. And it just opened up my whole approach. Then as I became a trainer and I got to be doing all these trainings, we have all these people coming into to seminars with Dr. Bandler from all different places, all different trainers, from places outside the licensed society of NLP. And I kept seeing that pattern. The people outside of the society and even some in the society that haven’t trained directly with. Dr. Bandler, were teaching this in this horrible way. And it just made me mad. It literally just angered me that this was being taught this way. And so it became one of my pet projects to make it more and more fun, easier to understand and more accessible. The biggest thing, if any of you are trainers out there, the biggest thing is if you’re going to explain something to someone, give them the experience first.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:03:37] Give them the experience first before you even tell them the label, and that’s the biggest problem with the Meta-Model, I guarantee you, if I took a poll right now with everybody out there, everybody would go: Oh, I know the Meta-Model, but I can’t tell you the name of the thing. That’s that thing where it’s like two things, but like one makes the other. So I don’t know what it’s called. And it’s like: OK, and I kept thinking to myself: Why is that so difficult to understand? Why can’t people remember these titles? And then it hit me and it dawned on me after having some conversations with Richard and talking to John, my husband, about it, and and I realized that it was not giving people the experience first. So when I teach the Meta-Model, then I give them an example of the pattern before telling them what the pattern is. And then I talk about the pattern and then I tell them what the title is. And I also use anchoring. So I have anchors for different patterns. I use a physical hand anchor for the different patterns so that later on, if I say the pattern, I just use the anchor and they go: Oh, complex equivalence. This is my anchor for complex equivalence. And I go: So what’s this pattern? I say the sentence and they go: Complex equivalence. But what I do is, for example, I would say: Time is money. Success is happiness. And and I explain like: How can these two things be one and the same? How can they be equal?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:05:12] Time, some hallucinated concept, money is a paper, coin, metal or now digits on a computer. I got to upgrade my trainings in this day and age. But how would these two things, one and the same, something pretty complex must have happened in order for these two things to be equal. Complex, equal. So then when I say: What are we going to call this pattern? They go: Oh, complex equivalence! Now it looks like it makes sense to them. But if I said upfront: OK, so the next pattern is complex equivalence and complex equivalence is when you have… As soon as you say the word complex equivalence they’re inside their head going, what the hell is that? What the hell does that mean? Complex, that means difficult and equivalent. So now they’re doing this thing in their head when you’re trying to teach them. And confusion is not the best state for learning. I think we found that out. So it really, for me, all of these things together came up with my mission to make NLP Meta-Model patterns more fun, easily described and easily remembered so that my students can tell you what a pattern is, not one hundred percent of the time. But my students can tell you what a pattern it is. And they don’t go freaking out because they can’t remember the patterns and they’re afraid to use it. That’s not the goal of it. This is the most important tool. So it should be easy to use and fun to use. And that’s my mission and my goal. My approach.

Michel Wozniak: [01:06:54] Thank you. There is one last question. I think we can combine two of the questions which are actually going exactly in the same direction from Isabelle, from France and from Dang from.. Other country. So he didn’t specify where he’s from. So the question is: How much time do you need to master the Meta-Model? And the challenge is: If you had 30 days to become a master of Meta-Model, what would you intensively practice?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:07:27] Well, how much time do you need to master the Meta-Model? I don’t know. I’ll let you know, because I don’t consider that I’ve mastered it, so I don’t know, I’ll let you know when I get there, how long it took! In seriousness, I don’t look at mastering as an end game, as an end limit. So to me, mastering it is continuing to work with it and develop it. Build with it, play with it. And you always think of those movies. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie Airplane. It’s a very funny movie back from the 70s. Yes. Airplane. And it’s like every time I’ve seen that movie and I’ve seen it probably about 12 times, every time I see that movie, I notice something else in the background that I didn’t notice the first 12 times I saw it. I find something else in there, a little sign in the background that I didn’t notice or something that somebody said off in the distance, and it’s like pfff… Because every time you approach something with your level of information and your level of filters, you’re able to gain more. This is why I tell people, I have instances where people go: You know I really want to practice the practitioner more and I go: Take it again. Oh, no, I don’t want to take practitioner course again, I already did it, you know. And I’m like some of the best trainers I know on this planet didn’t just do one practitioner, one master practitioner, showed up at the trainers training. The best trainers on this planet, including myself. I took about maybe six practitioners, probably about five master practitioners before I went to trainers training.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:09:14] And then I know some things are more fast now. Everybody wants more instant gratification, more so. But it’s about when you walk in, you’re at a different level. When I sit in a practitioner, when Richard’s training in the morning, John and I are usually in the back of the room and we’re maybe working on our computer, going through the files for the people in the room that are at the seminar. But I’m always listening and watching and it’s like every single time, even after almost 40 years, I still make a connection that goes: Wait a minute, it’s like I never heard him say that before. It’s like something new, a new connection, because our filters are changed. Our levels are changed. So when we go in at that level, you get more. So for the same thing with mastering the Meta-Model, it’s like: I find when I’m sometimes in the middle of teaching something, I realize: Oh, wait, it would be easier if I do this or here’s a better example. So I’m not done mastering the Meta-model, so I don’t know how long it takes. I do know that if you wanted to set a 30 day goal for yourself to improve your ability to use the Meta-Model, then what we said earlier: Write, write the patterns down, write them, write them, write them. There’s magic in that. And I think we spend a lot of time doing this (typing on keyboard) or this (using smartphone). And it’s great to go back and do some of that, too.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:10:47] And if that really upsets you, fine, I’ll take this (phone). But write the patterns. By generating the patterns, you will master them because it’s a whole different part of the brain getting involved. You’re using more the systems with the visual, the auditory and kinesthetic combined. Not everybody realizes this, but reading, you know, people think reading is visual and it’s so auditory, it’s not even funny. It’s a synesthesia pattern of visual and auditory because the whole thing with speed reading and Michel knows all about this, but the whole thing about speed reading is that the problem with people reading slow is because they can only read as fast as they can talk. Because they’re talking to themselves the whole time they’re reading, so when you shut off the auditory channel, then you can pick up the speed of reading. So it’s so important tu pull, if you really want to immerse in the information, is to pull all that together and use that kinesthetic and really, really build the patterns. The more you write them, the more you’ll use them, the more you’ll hear them and recognize them. And I say that for any of the patterns in NLP. I tell people with the ambiguities that they write phonological ambiguities, syntactic ambiguities, scope ambiguities, punctuation ambiguities, write them out. And if you have the ability to sit with someone and trade them back and forth, that’s always fun. But it’s that generating. The more you can generate them, the more you’ll use them and the more you’ll hear them and recognize them easily.

Michel Wozniak: [01:12:30] Thank you. We have comments on YouTube. We have Mark who asked a question, which you answered. He said, this is a delight. We have Jane, who is saying: I love your approach, Kathleen. There is Carol who said: Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for all those questions. And thank you for the answers, Kathleen.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:12:54] Now it’s time to play.

Michel Wozniak: [01:12:56] Yeah. Now it will be time to play. Do you need a break, Kathleen?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:13:00] I just tell you what, if you don’t mind, we take a two or three minute break, I just want to make sure that the contractors are done.

Michel Wozniak: [01:13:19] Two, three minutes. You can just leave the the camera on or you can switch it off as you wish. And just two minutes perhaps just to say a few words, just remember to, to subscribe to the channel, remember also to write some comments about the Masterclass, because it’s very interesting for people who are looking at the video to see what are the reflections people have about the content.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:13:51] We have also John Johnson, who is saying hi. Actually, it’s amazing, those masterclasses that we are having. We really want to to give you guys content, very useful content, so that we can all learn and go further with our comprehension of what NLP is.

Michel Wozniak: [01:14:22] And what comes next with the advanced approach of the Meta-Model is something that is very, very targeted, very specific. It’s even some content that is hard to get even in the trainings because those are very specific, extra contents. So just make a good use of it. And Kathleen is back.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:14:47] All being good.

Michel Wozniak: [01:14:49] Excellent. So what have you prepared for us?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:14:57] Well. Let’s just go back to sharing screen for a moment. So. I’m going to skip the review. Because you guys know the Meta-Model. Or you yes the Meta-Model. So. What I’d like you to look at is something that comes from..

Michel Wozniak: [01:15:35] For the moment, we don’t have the shared screen

Kathleen La Valle: [01:15:39] Really… All right, hold on one second. Because I hit the button that says that. Well. All right. Share screen,

Michel Wozniak: [01:16:13] Now you have to select your screen. OK, now it’s coming!

Michel Wozniak: [01:16:21] Yes, we have it. Perfect.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:16:25] All right, so, we talked a little bit about the whole notion of how Meta-Model’s formed in terms of from the experience, the deep structure to the surface structure and the filters involved in there. So we have the categories, deletions, distortions, generalizations. So I’m going to skip the actual, well, the singles. And I want to tell you about another metaphor, which is a true life experience, how this thing happened, is I was on a trip to Japan and I had already been working on building that second piece of the Metal-Model in terms of utilizing it, as opposed to just listening for it and asking questions. So this is the Inverse Metal-Model. So this is kind of a mobius, if you look at the one side of the model, the other side of the Meta-Model. So with this particular model, we’re looking at the inverse Meta-Model of understanding it. But it’s also about working with the client at the same time. I’ll explain how that makes sense in a moment. But I was on this trip to Japan and we had a couple of days off in between trainings. So we went to Kyoto, which is my favorite place in Japan, and we did what we call temple hopping. We went to every temple we could find and we went and visited and experienced.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:18:02] And we were walking along this river after dinner one night and it was a beautiful river in Kyoto, and all these little bridges that go across and little bridges were just four foot traffic only not cars. And I said, wow, that’s really cool. You have so many of these little bridges where people could just stand on the bridge and watch the river go by. And they said, oh, wait, if you were here during the festival of fabric, it would be even more beautiful. And I was like festival of fabric? So they told me about that in the old days, when they used to work with the kimono material when they would dye these kimonos material, beautiful colors. And the one thing about dyeing cloth is that you have to set it in cold water so the dye sets and it doesn’t bleed when you’re working with the fabric later on. And he said this is a perfect river. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, it’s the perfect temperature, it’s always cold. Rivers are always cold. They don’t get warm like a swimming pool does or even the ocean does. Rivers always stay cold. So it’s a perfect system. It’s a cold water and it always goes in the same direction and it always goes about the same speed all the time of the year in Japan. So it’s the perfect system, so they built the place that dyes the fabrics up river and they would take the fabrics, lay it on the surface of the water on the river and let it travel down.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:19:31] Now, they knew how long they wanted the fabric to be in the water to set, so they could calculate by the distance and the speed of the river where to build the other place that was going to collect the fabric, hang it up to dry, and then cut and make these beautiful kimonos. And I thought about that. I said, what a perfect system. They could have made this really difficult. They could have made like the plant up there and and then maybe put the other place next to it. But then they have to go out and get them or they would have to put it in a cart and have to carry it down the side of the river. They’d have to travel with the cart and the horses to drag the fabrics down to the other place to be. But no no, they had the perfect system in front of them. So they decided to use what worked. They decided to use the perfect system right there. So they put the fabric in, the fabrics would travel down the river. The other side at the right time would pull them out, dry them, cut them, sew them. Perfect. And it was gorgeous, people would travel just to see all this beautiful colored fabric floating on the surface of the river. It was gorgeous.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:20:45] So it was just.. And they don’t do it that way anymore. Now everything’s automated and faster, but they still once a year have this fabric festival where they reenact that process and people travel to see all this beautiful fabric floating down the river. So I thought about that. And I was already working on this system because one of the things I know is that, especially now I’m a new grandma, my granddaughter is eight months now and I’m watching this, and I’m lovingly saying, I’m watching this machine fire up and develop and learn and grow and do crazy things, and it’s the same thing that I’ve known when I worked on this model is that when we’re a human being and we’re dropped into this planet, blup, here we are, we’re immediately sampling or immediately tasting, smelling, feeling, listening, getting a sense for our world, and that’s what we call the environment. It’s the environment we live in. And the environment is just a world of stimulus/response mechanisms. We touch this, it’s soft. We touch this, it’s hard. We touch this, it’s hot. We don’t like the feel of that. We don’t like the bright lights, but we like things that are moving and colors and things moving around.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:22:17] We don’t like loud sudden noises, but we like silly singing and adults walking up to us and going: Do, pi, do. And we like that and we laugh when we go: Ha, ha! So, we start working all this stimulus/response things and that’s in the world of the environment. So we look at this. This is where we start as human beings. We start in this level of environment and it is the land of stimulus/response. Now, we touch something in a time. We touch something at a time. Now we’ve got to do something because there’s going to be hot things in the world. So we learn to build strategies to deal with, to exist in this stimulus/response land. So we go: Oh, we put a mit on our hand and we can touch the hot thing. Oh, cool. So we build strategies as babies. We figure out that if we crankle up our nose and start to go: Wooo! That somebody is going to come over and go: What’s wrong? and you want your diaper changed or you want some food or you’re just bored? So we start building strategies, we push how the limits are, we see how far we can push the limits. So we try and do things to get reactions. And we’re still working off those stimulus response. But now at a higher level function in the brain, we’ve moved up one level.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:23:49] Now we’re not just like: Awww! Now we’re like: Mmmm! How do I get rid of the Awww? How do we work around Awww? How do I get what I Mmmm want? So once we run strategies and we get some good results, we start to build that generalization in there. The patterning comes in and we go: Oh, you know what? This works! This makes this easier! This makes this better! So we start to build beliefs from seeing the results of these strategies running and that’s another ravelled function again. So now we’re growing in brain. So first we’re in the world touching, feeling, eating, tasting, smelling things. We start building ways to deal with those stimuluses and then we start categorizing and saying: Uh, this is a good strategy. This makes this easier. This makes this better. This gets me what I want. And we build beliefs. Now, from running those beliefs in our brain, we start to react differently down the chart, our activities change down here based on these beliefs. But what happens is the next level function comes up is because now when we run this belief, we run this belief, we run this belief and certain things start popping out that are similar. So we go: It’s good to put a glove on your hand before you touch a hot thing. That’s a believe. It’s good to do that because it makes me safe.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:25:22] Oh, it’s good to put two hands on the end table when I try and walk instead of just trying to walk free right now as a toddler, because that makes me safe. So we start building these beliefs and certain things keep popping up that are similar. And we go: You know, I kind of like this safe stuff. I’m going to value this. Now, we really change a lot of things under here based on these values. So this is another higher level function. So this is the normal way our brain develops things. This is the normal way people say: How do you build a value? You know, it’s stimulus/responses that you have in the world, how you work with them, what beliefs popped out of that, and then what patterns are similar in terms of the things we want? Communication, love, warmfull and dry, all that stuff. These are the things that we then value. So this is a higher chunk, it’s a higher brain function. Now, I love this, somebody actually asked me in the Masterclass yesterday, we didn’t spend as much time on this model, but I showed them the beginning of it. And somebody said: What if you get your values from your parents? And I said, yeah, but how? Magic How question in Meta-Model, how did you get the value from your parents? And they went, well,

Kathleen La Valle: [01:26:51] I heard them say things, and then there were certain things I did that I was told no or yes. And then I started to believe that this was important. So you could say: Yeah, I get you get your values from your parents or your clergymen or your friends or your whatevers. But the way that you build it is up this path that somebody told you, you heard it or you also saw them as models. You saw them doing the things down here in the environment, and they were showing you how to do things in that value. And then because it was running and it was running and they look good doing it and you look good doing it, it felt good. You know what? This stuff’s pretty good. This value. I think I do need to value love or I do need to value helping people or whatever it is, and that moves you up to values. So this is the normal process. I don’t care how you got your values or who you get your values from. This is the process you had to run it through to get to that level of brain function. So now what does this mean?

Michel Wozniak: [01:28:00] I have a question. In other models above values, we see also sometimes identity and also spirituality. What is your opinion about their presence or absence?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:28:18] Ok, so this is similar to what you might see in logical levels or other models that are out there in NLP and it’s different because first of all, a lot of them put beliefs and strategies on the same box. And they’re not the two different brain function levels. This is not a function of the brain, level of the brain. They’re two different. So they don’t belong in the same box, or I’ve seen it where beliefs and values are on the same box and they’re not, they’re completely different because one yields the other. This one yields this. This one yields this. Now, you could argue the identity box that I chose to leave out on purpose is because what you do (environment level), how you do it (strategy level), what you believe (belief level) and what you hold important (value level) is certainly going to have an impact on who you are as a person, because to me, it’s here, it’s your actions that really is the most important place, what you do. I don’t care if you want to see your identity as, I don’t know, let’s pick an identity. There are people out there that would say that they’re a empathetic, philanthropist, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I don’t care what you call yourself. I want to know what you do and how you do it. That’s what’s important to me. And I also have a major reaction to putting someone’s identity in a box. I see this as more of a fluid model, so for me, to say now I have to decide who I am as a person and then put a box around it and a name to it, I don’t think that helps people. So I purposely left that out. Now, spirituality, anything, even the intuition we were talking about, where do you think intuition is on here? What do you think intuition might be on? I’m going to answer the question, I’m asking for everybody to consider that. And either Michel or Nathalie, if you want to answer that question, you can. But where do you think intuition is on here?

Michel Wozniak: [01:30:26] For me, it’s a combination of all because there’s there are elements from the environment, environment that are going to influence the intuition or strategy for it.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:30:37] Yes. Then you confirm it with your beliefs and..

Kathleen La Valle: [01:30:41] Your intuition is down in here. Your intuition is down in here. Now, some people’s beliefs will stop them from getting the information because they don’t believe their intuitive or they think it’s woohoo stuff going up to values, some of them go: Whoo! Intuition is like witchcraft. That’s bad stuff. So we shouldn’t be talking about those things. So that might stifle this. But your intuition is down here. And certainly the beliefs and values you hold will help you work with that more. But absolutely. So that’s why I stopped at values, because this to me is the way the brain progresses. This is more about brain development and level of brain function than what logical levels and all that other stuff proposes to do. Because my issue with those is that: (A) they’re not chunked properly, in my opinion; and, (B) going up to this level of, you know.. I had a trainer once who was teaching, I forget what it was, it was the Clare Graves’ model or something, and it was like: Oh, well, I’m actually level, think it went up at that time it only went up to level 12 or something, he goes: I’m actually a level 14, but they haven’t defined that yet because.. I was like: Oh, my God… So. This is where I stop because this is about the brain and that’s what we do in NLP. I certainly hope people hold themselves to high identity, but anybody’s identity, I can describe down here, how they live their life, what they do, and the beliefs and values are their opinion, you know, unless they try and sell them to people and it’s not useful. But this is to me where all the action is and that’s the judge for me if someone is what they do, how they do it.

Michel Wozniak: [01:32:44] I really appreciate it. That’s a really a key point that it’s not about what you say you are. It’s about what you do. And this is really is a great answer.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:32:54] I also think that it has also to be connected with your beliefs, because if you believe you are a good person, you’re going to have a good behavior, or if you believe that you are able to, you are going to become what you believe.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:33:16] Until somebody calls you on your stuff. You might believe you’re a good person. If you’re not doing..

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:33:24] Good actions, absolutely.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:33:25] Going to call you out on it sooner or later. And then you’re going to have to reexamine that belief and check it against your values and to change the way you do some things.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:33:37] Thank you for that answer.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:33:39] You’re welcome. So you have this grid, right? OK, so what the heck does this have to do with Meta-Model? Everything. Because I have people in class tell me: Oh, a client comes in and they say that they want this. How do I know whether I should do a belief change or collapsing anchors or timeline or change personal history? So what I noticed is that when your client is speaking, if you’re paying attention to not only the Meta-Model patterns, but where they are on this chart, you’re going to find out where you have to change something, so if they’re using something like, you know, “Every time I try to succeed, I fail”. So that’s a what? Universal quantifier. Every time I try to succeed, I fail. So are they in environment or strategies? Where do you think they are? So they’re up in the land of beliefs. Now, this belief was built because every time they tried, they failed. Every time they tried, they failed. Every time they tried, they failed. And when they kept failing, then they built the belief that says: You know what? Every time I try to succeed, I fail. So it’s definitely a belief. Now when we get some of the others in here, we’re going to understand a little more of the process. But universal quantifier is definitely up in the land of beliefs. Now, if they say something like: When I try to talk to somebody, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:35:26] So when I try to talk to somebody, it makes me feel uncomfortable. So they’re not able to do job interviews, they’re not able to ask their boss for a raise or when they’re having problems, because when they try and talk to somebody about something important, it makes them feel uncomfortable. So that’s still here. Right? But think about that process. Now, if they had that belief that “when I try to succeed, it makes me fail”, “when I try to succeed, it makes me fail.” “When I try to succeed, it makes me fail.” “You kwow what? Every time I try to succeed, I fail.” So now you can feel that the universal quantifier is actually a higher function than simple cause and effect. So a cause and effect is still a belief, but it’s a little bit lower than the universal quantifier. You have a bigger problem to unravel when somebody gives you the universal quantifier. But sometimes it’s easier actually to unravel because you can just get one counterexample and it blows the whole thing away. The cause and effect, you might have to work a little harder, but the complex equivalence has to be broken first because it’s a higher belief and you can fight this one till the cows come home, if you don’t take care of the universal quantifier first, if that’s what your client is telling you.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:36:45] So you listen for the belief patterns like cause and effect, universal quantifier. Let’s take a simple one. So if somebody says that they want to learn faster. So if they want to learn faster, the simple NLP question of Meta-Model patterns would be: How fast we’re talking about? How much faster? Faster than what? Those are what? Comparative deletions. And we’re talking about strategy land. So the comparative deletions are down here in that respect. And so now, you can argue that, well, they believe they’re not learning fast enough or something. That’s a whole different ballgame. When they say the sentence: I need to learn faster, I want to learn faster, I need a faster strategy of learning, a faster way of learning. We’re down here in strategy land. So just by listening to them talking, you already know that if they’re giving you cause and effects and complex equivalences, you know it’s time for a belief change. That’s where your NLP is going to happen. If they’re using patterns like the comparative deletions, things like that, then you know that you have a better chance of working within the strategies or submodality shifts, things like that. So this gives you a hint. By the way, something like a collapsing anchor, since this is the land of stimulus/response, collapsing anchors, you can do down here (Environment) because we’re just having them pick a different response to the stimulus and listening to how they describe it will tell you whether or not you’re going to have to go up to believe or you can just simply tell them to cancel out and choose a different way of responding to that stimulus, especially with collapsing anchor issues.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:38:39] A lot of times it isn’t an issue of they’re afraid of that voice or it’s triggering something. But it’s just that it drives them nuts, they can’t stand it. Whether it’s somebody chewing near them, they can’t stand or whether it’s just the whiny voice they can’t stand or the time clock moving very slowly in a long line. You can have them take a different response to that. So those kind of things can be done when it’s a stimulus response issue, it can be done down in the environment. So by listening to your client, you have an idea of where you’re going to be doing the work, of what level of function they’re at when they’re describing what it is they want or the issue that they have when they first tell you. So let’s look at some of the other patterns. So nominalizations, where do you think nominalizations lie?

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:39:32] Absolutely a value.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:39:36] Values: communication, respect, love, safety, those are all nominalisations. So the nominalizations are up in the land of values up in here. Let’s see:; Mind read? Where do you think mind read is? They don’t like me. They don’t.. Whatever.

Michel Wozniak: [01:39:57] Maybe it’s a belief that could be connected to a strategy because in order to guess that, you need the strategy.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:40:04] That’s a lower, right. And when you ask the good Meta-Model question, as you do as practitioners, when you ask the good Meta-Model question about the mind read: How do you know? They’re probably going to give you a ‘What’? A strategy but how they figured it out? So you say: How do you know they hate you? They’re going to go in and tell you how they figured it out. They’re going to give you a strategy. Now, if they give you another belief and don’t give you the strategy, then, you know there’s a serious issue there, that somehow they’re connecting in all these situations: I’m going to be a mess. In all these situations, I’m going to have a hard time. So it gives you a lot of information. But nine times out of ten, they are going to, when you ask the question “How do you know they hate you?”, they’re going to drop down and give you the strategy. OK, so then you can change their strategy or you can just do the belief change and shifting that, that they might mean something else. You know it might not mean that they hate you. It might mean something else. Or you can have them build a different strategy for how they’re making these jump conclusions when they’re not useful. If they’re good mind reads, then congratulate them that they’ve got a great strategy. But it may not solve the problem, but that usually gives you information as to what they need to be doing differently. So we have mind read, nominalizations. Lost performative: It’s good to be things. It’s good to do things the right way. It’s bad to do things the wrong way.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:41:37] That would be between beliefs and values?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:41:42] Beliefs and values. Yes, so the lost performative is definitely a belief. And it’s a high belief because you’re pitting, that belief against the values, the things that you hold near and dear, you’re pitting that belief against the values. So absolutely. Yeah. OK, so, Modal operator of possibility: I can. I can do it.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:42:17] That, that would be, I would say, between strategy and belief, because I can do it. I have a strategy. So I built a belief that I can.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:42:29] Right. So the belief is here. It’s a belief, I can do it. You believe you can do it, but it’s based on a strategy. You’ve done it, or you know how to do it. So you say: I can do it, so now you have a belief, Modal operator of possibility. Now what about a modal operator of necessity? I need, I must, I have to.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:42:51] That’s value,

Michel Wozniak: [01:42:52] Belief, value.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:42:54] Now you have the modal operator that jumps because, what are your needs? Your needs are your values. So the important part is that you have the needs and that raises the level of the belief. So where you have modal operator of possibility, it is just coming off a strategy. Modal operator of necessity is a belief reaching up to a need, “they need”, reaching up to your values. Now, some of these are important because they’re transition patterns. So “can”, by the way, is a transition pattern. So if I was working with a client and we built a new strategy for them, I’m going to use a model operator of possibility to help them build a strong belief. Because the problem with this model is that if you do a belief change and then you go five bucks, pay me now, I don’t work that cheap. But if you go, here’s your new belief. Congratulations. Now, what happens if you haven’t attached this belief to a value that they have? Now you have a belief that’s like whoooo! It’s just sort of hanging in midair. Then what happens when they go back to the environment, the first time that they try to do something, all of a sudden, they don’t have a strategy for working with that new belief.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:44:34] That’s a problem. That’s a problem. So when you make a belief change with someone, you help them to change the belief that they have, then you’ve got to make sure that they know how to live with that. They know what value it’s attached to. So because you have this new belief, it just means you’re going to have more time for the family or whatever value you know, from doing your well-formed outcome you know, it’s attached to. You have more time with the family now. And as you see yourself spending time with the family, notice how you can plan better vacations or more vacations or longer vacations, and you can still have time for your work and you plan out your your week that you have time for this, time for that. And then you can build that sense of back to that belief that you just did. So it’s important. When you’re in baseball, we call it, “you’ve got to touch all four bases for a home run”. So it’s important that wherever you make the change for your client, that you go back and you touch all four bases. Whether the belief, turn it to value, you can future pace down on the environment, make sure they have a way of living with this new belief.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:45:47] And then back to the belief. If you did a strategy change, then you need to move up to belief so that they believe this new strategy is going to be good and it’s going to get them what they want. And you can future pace in the environment back to where you needed the new strategy. So you’re touching all four bases. So how do you move somebody from strategies to beliefs? Because you’ve got to move them to all four bases. So by using a Meta-Model pattern. So now that you have this faster way of learning, notice how you can. Learn faster and easier. You’ll have more information available to you. It will make it easier to get better jobs, to get whatever blah, blah, blah. So by using the can pattern, the mobile operator of possibility, you can move somebody from strategies to beliefs. And each and every time you run this new strategy, it will only move you closer to the things you desire. So I’m using a universal quantifier to move up in the beliefs land, closer to values. So by using the Meta-Model patterns, you can move somebody to a different level of thinking by utilizing. That’s the inverse Meta-Model. Makes sense? You have any questions on that?

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:47:12] No, I have just a big WHAAAAAA!!!

Kathleen La Valle: [01:47:19] So that’s the thing that makes this magic, as I’m saying, is because when your client’s talking to you, you can be following. I used to have one of these blank grids and I invite any of you out there. There was a copyright on it, but I invite any of you out there to make up little cards for yourself. If you’re seeing clients with these four boxes and when your client is talking, just get used to tracking where they are and you can put little  notes here, the phrase they said, and number them if you want. First they said this and then they said this and they’re here. So I would track my clients where they were on this chart. And by listening to the Meta-Model patterns, I knew where they were going. And then when I decided where the best change piece was going to be, then I knew to go to all four boxes. And we call this creating generative change, because if you just do a value shift and they have no clue how to live in the environment with this new value or how to do it or what to even think about it, then it’s only going to work until it doesn’t. And those of us that have worked with clients we know, we’ve had clients with three weeks later, three months later, they call us up and they go: I was doing so good. It was great. And then it all unraveled. Well, this is a way of hedging your bets, as we call it, or stacking the deck so that those things don’t happen, because I can guarantee you something was changed, but they didn’t have a functional way of working with it. And the first time a big stimulus came along, their response was Argh! Ooops. And then it just all collapsed like a deck of cards, like a house of cards. So it’s important that you touch all four boxes when you’re building and how you move somebody from here to here, or here to here, or here to here, here, is by literally using the Meta-Model patterns that will take them to that area.

Michel Wozniak: [01:49:25] Excellent, excellent.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:49:27] Are there any questions on the YouTube channel now?

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:49:30] I do have a question. You mentioned the the future pacing and sometimes we tend to do the future pacing, getting out of this river in the environment level. Is there a rule? Is there a best practice if you began in the belief with the client, you touch all four bases following this river, and then you future pace at the believe level. What would be your recommendation on that?

Kathleen La Valle: [01:50:19] Well, first of all, keep in mind that this is all happening during and after you’ve done all the desired state work, so you have to ask all those desired questions, to get all that information that we get, because there are gems in there, there’s really great information. So it’s important to not put that aside and just go do this. So because all of this information down here into how they want to do it and future pacing, all comes from that information you gathered in the well-formed desired state, during the interaction with them. So it’s important that, you know, all of that still happens because that’s where all the gems are. Then you know what to trigger off in the future pacing, because you know you’ve put them in a desired state. And you know, the magic of the desired state is that when you get someone in the well-formed part, or well-formed goal, and you have them try on the desired state because you’re doing it so that you know it’s testable, you want to get all of the submodalities, what they’ll look like, what they’ll sound like, how they’ll feel like, how other people will react to them. You’re gathering all that information in the well-formed outcome, in the well-formed desired state. And that is the part that goes in the future pacing so that once you’ve done this and you’ve got them in the environment, you say: So go out to the next time in the future when in the past it might have been a problem, But notice now how when you walk into the room, you’re standing a certain way, your voice sounds a certain way, you feel a certain way, you notice the people around you saying: Wow, you look great today or whatever it is.

[01:51:59] So you have all the information to put in there. You know the things they’ve tried in the past that didn’t work and now the things that you built in instead, the better strategy or whatever. So all of that is really from doing the desired state work correctly, right from the beginning. So that’s the importance there. Working with this and getting used to it comes from getting familiar, as I said, with generating the Meta-Model patterns. That’s the important part. If you generate those Meta-Model patterns, then you’ll have no problem generating them to go up and down this values chart. You know, that will just be… How do you say that Michel? The complete… When you say pay the complete or something? That’s a done deal. There’s a phrase for that. You say it’s a done deal, it’s going to happen.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:53:02] The whole enchilada! But it’s not french!

Kathleen La Valle: [01:53:10] It’s a whole process. It just becomes a done deal, as we say, in the States. So you can build that process in there by just simply being comfortable using the patterns and knowing where they’re taking you, knowing the direction of each one to the other.

Michel Wozniak: [01:53:39] And there is a very interesting part about this model that we could experience also during the last training in hypnosis that we had not a long time ago, where you also proposed to use that model to generate trance states and going through the environment and strategy, believe and value. And that was quite amazing. That was the first time I was hearing that idea. And it worked really great.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:54:09] Yes. It’s magical in that respect because it’s about how the brain works. It’s about how our brain functions. And the other piece in that seminar that we did, too, with the building states, because if you want someone to be excited about the process and they’re fearful of the process, curiosity works best. So if you build a strong sense of curiosity so that they become curious about how good it’s going to be if they finish this process or how good is it going to be? And then some people need permission that they know that they can do it, which is the belief that it’s possible that they can do it. So you can literally work down here in hypnosis with all of the simple.. That’s what we are doing in Milton Model. (Environment level) You don’t talk about the exact feeling of the cushion of the chair, but you say, you know how that chair feels right now. You don’t say how it feels good or feel bad because you don’t know what the person is experiencing. So you use your deletions, you talk about that chair or that feeling or that sensation, you know, and then (Strategy level) you’re giving them a strategy for the way that they can compare so that they’re going to go deeper into trance, comparative deletion, that they’re going to experience trance, unspecified verb.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:55:37] That’s where unspecified verb is, by the way, because you’re talking about things like learning or relaxing or trancing or whatever it is so that (Belief level) they realize that they can accomplish the things they want to in this trance (Value level) because it’s good for them, but it gives them the things they want. So it’s just you could take anything in NLP and could even take anything in any subject and put it in this model, because it’s how the brain thinks in chunks and layers. Each one is a little higher function and especially, when we look at the Meta-Model patterns, it gives us even more information here because, as we said, there’s mind reading. Another function to that is the cause and effect. Another function higher is when we connect it to be a universal quantifier. And then, every time, I didn’t mention this before. So let’s take that again. So mind reading, first level of belief, then we get up to: You know what? This makes this happen. So now we’ve got the cause and effect and this makes this happen and this makes this happen. You know what? Every time this happens, every time when we do this thing, it happens.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:56:52] Now we got the universal quantifier. Now, if you do this, every time this happens, every time this happens, every time this happens, you know what? This is that. And that’s the complex equivalence. So the ‘This is that’ is the result of all those other things, so it’s the next level up again. So when you put the Meta-Model patterns in here, it gives you higher levels of function and explains how people do that, because that always cracked me up with complex equivalences, like: How do you come up with that? How did you make that happen? How is that equal to that? How did you do that? Well, it’s quite simple, because if you had the time and wanted to and desired to, actually chunk them back down, you would find exactly what happened from the environment, the stimulus/responses and how they tried to work with it. And then they started building these chunk it up with these beliefs, chunk it up with these beliefs to the point where they just went, you know what? It’s hopeless, because this is that anyway so I’m never going to attain it. And that gives them the excuse why they can’t have what they want.

Michel Wozniak: [01:58:04] Yeah, very, very interesting, yeah, wow.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:58:12] I mean, think about the Indiana Jones thing, someone popping, you know, it’s exciting to think about where they might be in this chart because they’re building this, you know, beliefs. And I don’t know how many times I sayed to them: How the hell did you come to that? I don’t ask them that question. It’s not a good Meta-model question. How the heck did you come up with that? Because in your mind, you didn’t go those stairs, you know, you didn’t make those connections, you didn’t have those experiences. But this gives you so much more information in that respect. It’s getting dark in here. It seems like contractors just left. I’m going to see if I can open the door and turn the whole light, just one second.

Nathalie de Marcé: [01:59:11] This Masterclass, I have understood the same things over and over, but every single time is a little bit different and it’s amazing. All the uses that we can have with this.

Michel Wozniak: [01:59:27] And this model is very interestingly worked on during the Master Practitioner. So it’s a very good opportunity to practice that and to do or redo a master prac, which is very, very much interesting about using this model.

Kathleen La Valle: [01:59:47] Even the practitioner, like I said, to me, that’s the gem. The real key is to write this out, practice this. I mean, certainly, when you’re seeing clients, put this model on, turn it on, turn on your filter and start jotting down where you notice them and you’re going to gain more and more information from it. And it gives you a map to follow, it helps you understand where they built these things from and where to put a change in that you can have that impact for them.

Michel Wozniak: [02:00:29] Kathleen, thank you very much. I think, yeah, we made two hours. We did it.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:00:34] Any questions on YouTube?

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:00:38] There’s many amazed people that are commenting: Yess, we have to practice!

Kathleen La Valle: [02:00:48] They’re happy, that’s my value right there. It’s hard not seeing everybody. In live trainings, I want to see people react. I want to see people go WOW.

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:00:59] We have Jane that’s saying thank you so much. And Maha-Khala:

Michel Wozniak: [02:01:10] “When is the next Masterclass?”

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:01:14] John Johnson also is having a question: Where is the word ‘just’ located in your plan?

Kathleen La Valle: [02:01:24] I talked about that yesterday a little bit when one of the exercises we did yesterday was I had somebody Meta-Model the question. So as a client, I say: What do you want? And I wanted the client to say: It’s just not possible. Now, where’s the Meta-Model pattern in there? It’s all over the planet. There really is no clear distinct.. You know, some people say, oh, it’s a modal operator of possibility, but not really, just because they said it’s not possible, and it’s “just”. Because when people use the word “just”, there’s two things that happen. One is, you know that they’re raising to the level of belief, because they justify what’s going on, it’s a justification. So, as you say, “it’s just this”. They also minimize. “It’s just that I can’t go to the party”. You know? They didn’t say “I can’t go to the party”. “It’s just that I can’t go to the party”. “It’s just that I don’t want to”. “It’s just that I don’t feel well”. So they’re justifying something that they’re saying. So when somebody uses the word just, I think that raises to the level of belief because there’s a belief or at least they want you to have the belief that it’s not possible or that they really want to, but they can’t, or they really want to but they don’t want to, but they don’t want you to know that they don’t want to.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:02:56] So I think there’s a strategy engaged there, it’s a very low belief. But it’s also using some sort of strategy rather than just telling you flat out: “I don’t want to go to your party”. You’re going to try, and it’s just that, you know, I have too many things to do this week. So, you’re building this belief in you and them, but it’s really a strategy for avoiding the conflict of the situation. So I think it’s definitely in my mind anyway, it’s definitely somewhere in here (strategy/belief level). But as soon as you hear the word ‘just’, “it’s just that I can’t”, “it’s just that I whatever” they’re working in the land of beliefs and there’s some sort of justification process going on, a strategy to justify what they’re going to say or do.

Michel Wozniak: [02:03:51] Oh, that’s very interesting. I didn’t think about that word. It’s very interesting.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:03:56] Very powerful word.

Michel Wozniak: [02:04:00] Ok, so perhaps just to finish, would you mind stopping the sharing like that, we will be all seen on the big screen? Excellent. Thank you. So really Kathleen, we wanted to thank you. We want to thank you for your time, for this opportunity we have to have this master class with you. We want to thank also everybody who is attending and all those who are going to be attending in the next few days and months and years perhaps. Yes.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:04:37] Yeah. We’re finally back to life trainings again starting in August. We’re very excited. You know, we get to see people again and not only tiny boxes.

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:04:47] Yes, it’s amazing. We have been saying that this zoom thing is opening opportunities to do these kind of things. And I don’t think we are going to go back in that level. But we just finished a practitioner in live and to do exercises with live people, that you can see the reaction of all of them. And the patterns and everything is different.

Michel Wozniak: [02:05:30] Kathleen is frozen…

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:05:34] Anyway, I think that the the main point is practice, really, really practice. And I have been hearing Richard and John… you’re back! Yes, I was saying the point is to practice. And I have been hearing Richard and John and you every single time telling us: Practice, practice, practice. And I think it’s the way to to get better at this.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:06:08] Absolutely. Absolutely. And like I was saying, when I froze, I don’t plan on stopping doing Masterclasses and things like this. I think it’s one thing that this whole mess has taught us the value of being able to reach people all over the world and get everybody together to talk about something or do a Masterclass. I think they’re great. And it’s, you know, you don’t want to travel halfway across the world to do a one day seminar or a two hour seminar. So for smaller things, I think this is great that I’ve learned how to use Zoom. And I think we can do more things like this, it’s great in between seminars. I love it.

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:06:48] So and Kathleen, I cannot thank you enough you for me, you are a mentor, you’re the jewel of the crown. I really mean it! Really! I really enjoy learning from you because when I learned the Meta-Model the first time, it wasn’t with you guys and they told me, you have to learn this by heart and don’t matter if you don’t understand, just be able to bark it.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:07:24] Noooo!!!!

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:07:24] It’s so much fun the way that it is taught by you and with Richard. It’s amazing.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:07:34] Thank you and thank both of you. I think you guys have done a great job with all the things you’ve done. You’ve done Masterclasses with Richard and with John, and bringing me up now, I think it’s great to be able to provide this for the people all around the world that haven’t had the opportunity to train with us yet or to see this particular model or something that Richard or John have done. So thank you, guys. You guys are fabulous. I miss you!

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:08:03] And I miss you too.

Michel Wozniak: [02:08:08] So thank you very much. And thank you also to everyone who participated, everyone who was watching us. And remember, just subscribe. We have a lot of content also to give on the channel with Masterclasses, with many other interesting things. So just subscribe and we really hope to see all of you very soon in person. And Kathleen, we wish you all the best.

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:08:40] Thank you so much for being here.

Kathleen La Valle: [02:08:43] Thank you very much.

Nathalie de Marcé: [02:08:44] You are the best, Bye, bye.